IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Obama stumps for clean energy, while Romney promotes...coal; Wildfires rage across the West; Nuclear reactor in hot water; PLUS: Mutant butterflies in Japan. This may not end well... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

A reactor at the Millstone nuclear plant in Waterford, Conn., has shut down because of something that its 1960s designers never anticipated: the water in Long Island Sound was too warm to cool it. Under the reactor’s safety rules, the cooling water can be no higher than 75 degrees. On Sunday afternoon, the water’s temperature soared to 76.7 degrees, prompting the operator, Dominion Power, to order the shutdown of the 880-megawatt reactor.

“At a moment when homegrown energy, renewable energy, is creating new jobs in states like Colorado and Iowa, my opponent wants to end tax credits for wind energy producers. Think about what that would mean for a community like Pueblo,” Obama told a crowd of about 3,500 people at the Colorado State Fairgrounds. “The wind industry supports about 5,000 jobs across this state. Without those tax credits, 37,000 American jobs, including potentially hundreds of jobs right here in Pueblo, would be at risk.”

The Romney campaign accuses Mr. Obama of favoring renewables at the expense of more proven energy sources --- like coal, which produces 45 percent of the nation's electricity. "We have 250 years of coal. Why the heck wouldn't we use it?" Romney asked a crowd recently.

According to documents obtained by the Boston Globe, Rep. Ryan (R-WI) lobbied the Department of Energy for tens of millions of dollars in stimulus grants for Wisconsin energy initiatives at least four times - even while calling the stimulus a "wasteful spending spree."

In a surprising turnaround, the amount of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere in the U.S. has fallen dramatically to its lowest level in 20 years, and government officials say the biggest reason is that cheap and plentiful natural gas has led many power plant operators to switch from dirtier-burning coal.

Proposals from GOP lawmakers to open nearly all federal lands and waters to oil-and-gas development would not generate much additional revenue, according to the Congressional Budget Office. CBO released an analysis on Thursday that said opening protected areas would generate a mere fraction of the revenue from existing oil-and-gas activity on federal land.

Genetic mutations have been found in three generations of butterflies from near Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, scientists said Tuesday, raising fears radiation could affect other species.
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There are claims that the effects of nuclear exposure have been observed on successive generations of descendants of people living in Hiroshima and Nagasaki when the US dropped atomic bombs in the final days of World War II.

But Otaki warned it was too soon to jump to conclusions, saying his team's results on the Fukushima butterflies could not be directly applied to other species, including humans.

'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (Stuff we didn't have time for in today's audio report)...

In a surprising turnaround, the amount of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere in the U.S. has fallen dramatically to its lowest level in 20 years, and government officials say the biggest reason is that cheap and plentiful natural gas has led many power plant operators to switch from dirtier-burning coal.

On Tuesday, the Boston Globe and Associated Press reported on documents showing that GOP Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan had secured more than $20 million in stimulus funds for a local energy efficiency organization... His requests came at the same time he was publicly calling the stimulus a “wasteful spending spree.” However, in an interview with a local Ohio television news station, Ryan claimed he never secured funding through the program, saying “I never asked for stimulus.”

In a potential milestone for ocean management, a team of collaborators has produced the first Ocean Health Index, a tool for appraising the state of the world’s oceans. The index takes into account the major factors that influence the quality of regional marine ecosystems like fisheries, biodiversity, tourism and carbon storage and then assigns a score from zero to 100 for each place.

Toilet of the future wins $100,000 from Gates Foundation for solar-powered unit that recycles water and turns waste into energy. Foundation will spend $3.4 million on its 'toilet of the future' initiative.

Agenda 21 is a completely non-binding international framework for sustainability passed in 1992 at the Rio Earth Summit. The framework, which sets out very loose aspirational goals for making communities more efficient and less carbon-intensive, was signed by then President George H.W. Bush and later upheld by Presidents Bill Clinton and President George W. Bush.
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In fact, the Agenda 21 language explicitly states that countries and local communities have “the sovereign right to exploit their own resources pursuant to their own environmental and developmental policies.”

Yet methane hasn't gotten anywhere near the same attention as carbon dioxide from governments and businesses aiming to stop climate change without hindering economies. That is changing now as methane makes headlines because of new numbers showing more leakage than previously thought from natural gas wells and pipelines. Some critics say natural gas is a worse climate-change polluter than coal. That's hotly disputed by energy companies.

For the electric power industry, the signs of change are in the air. Power plants are emitting less pollution than in prior years, and renewable power is a bigger part of the energy mix than ever before. ... The industry is in the midst of a real transition, and a new Ceres report shows that it's happening even faster than experts predicted.

Armed with the latest monsoon rainfall data, weather experts finally conceded this month that India is facing a drought, confirming what millions of livestock farmers around the country had known for weeks.
...Just over halfway through this season, the rains are 17 percent below normal, and the weather office has forecast that the El Nino weather pattern will bring more disappointment in the few weeks that remain.

THE REALITY: [Muller's] claim is flatly wrong and betrays a disturbing lack of awareness of the published literature (not just the technical literature, but high profile paper in e.g. Nature) for a self-styled 'climate expert'.

Ambassador Richard H. Jones warned that if energy policies do not adapt, enough carbon dioxide will be being emitted to reach 1,000 parts per million in the atmosphere. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that equates to 6º Celsius increase in temperature by the end of this century. "That's basically Miami Beach in Boston," he said.

The fight, in the end, is about whether the industry will succeed in its fight to keep its special pollution break alive past the point of climate catastrophe, or whether, in the economists' parlance, we'll make them internalize those externalities.

Human activity is affecting Earth in many ways, but a new study suggests that continued population growth and its impact on climate and ecology could trigger a more profound chain reaction of effects within little more than a decade.

Top climate scientist James Hansen tells the story of his involvement in the science of and debate over global climate change. In doing so he outlines the overwhelming evidence that change is happening and why that makes him deeply worried about the future.

It's simple: If there is to be any hope of avoiding civilization-threatening climate disruption, the U.S. and other nations must act immediately and aggressively on an unprecedented scale. That means moving to emergency footing. War footing. "Hitler is on the march and our survival is at stake" footing. That simply won't be possible unless a critical mass of people are on board. It's not the kind of thing you can sneak in incrementally.

The world is likely to build so many fossil-fuelled power stations, energy-guzzling factories and inefficient buildings in the next five years that it will become impossible to hold global warming to safe levels, and the last chance of combating dangerous climate change will be "lost for ever", according to the most thorough analysis yet of world energy infrastructure.
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"The door is closing," Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, said. "I am very worried - if we don't change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety]. The door will be closed forever."

Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, says there's no question that the influence of his group and others like it has been instrumental in the rise of Republican candidates who question or deny climate science. "If you look at where the situation was three years ago and where it is today, there's been a dramatic turnaround. Most of these candidates have figured out that the science has become political," he said.
...Groups like Americans for Prosperity have done it."

As Matt Taiibi says the profits from Cap N Trade end up on Wall Street.Our president is lying about pushing alternative energy in this form.

"The reality is, subsidies for industrial wind cost far more than any other source, as spelled out in the recent Master Resource article, "New York State's Money - Road to Nowhere:"

"On a per kWh basis, wind receives 80 times the public subsidies received by fossil fuels, but produces no reliable electricity capacity and very few American jobs. In fact, for every green job that wind supposedly creates, it destroys two to four regular jobs - in large part due to skyrocketing electricity rates."

The proposed off shore wind farm in Nantucket Sound, Mass. is now estimated to cost 300% more to build than was originally estimated. Electricity bills will also rise 300%. Even Wal Mart does not want it. These corporate criminals usually stick together, not so with the prospect of sky high electricity. They draw the line when it comes to their dollars.

Okay, Molly - let's set aside for the moment the accuracy of your claims about wind subsidies vs. fossil fuel subsidies... (next time, include links so our readers can verify for themselves)

Just how much is clean air, water and soil worth to you? Most people would be willing to pay more if it meant their children didn't suffer from lifelong asthma due to air pollution from heavily subsidized coal-fired power plants.

How much are fish *not* poisoned with mercury worth to you? How much is a stable, livable climate worth to you? How much are you willng to risk climate destabilization and saddle your kids and grandkids with a massive carbon debt, just so you can have a few extra bucks today?

Sure, you can try to make the economic argument that because dirty, polluting fossil fuels are artificially cheap [due to subsidies and 100 years of preferential policy treatment], gosh we shouldn't even try to innovate or clean up or do better, even if it costs just a bit more. Since computers and cell phones were more expensive in their early years of development, did you advocate against those, too?

Americans are now aware that they don't have to choose between money and their kids' health --- and they know instinctively that the claims of the "America Can't" crowd are utterly false. We know that yes, we can have both affordable clean energy and a vibrant, resilient economy --- because of real-world examples of Denmark, Germany, Texas, Iowa, California, and other wind energy leaders who are all doing so right now.

This is the right blog for everyone who really wants to find out about this topic.

You know so much its almost tough to argue with you (not that I personally will
need to HaHa). You definitely put a fresh spin on a
subject that has been discussed for years. Excellent stuff, just great!